The Green One

Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. – Christian Scriptures, Hebrews 13:2

Today was a poignant day for my husband and me. We were driving home from Greensboro to our little wide spot in the road near Hillsborough, and we stopped at the rest stop between the two. We travel with our new puppy these days, a feisty little Westie, and so we made a pit stop for him. As soon as we got out of our car, a young man came up to us and asked if he could speak to us. Like most people, I suppose, we were leery, but we’re pretty sappy about trying to help people, so we listened while he told us how he accidentally got locked out of his car with his two dogs in it, had to call a locksmith, who overcharged him $150, and now, he said, he had no money to get home on and asked if we could we give him some.

May I say, here, that in this country where panhandling has become increasingly common and seems to be a fairly organized enterprise, our first reaction was suspicion. I tend to be a bit resentful when people with pathetic signs about their misfortunes come up to my car at intersections to ask for money, and my first impulse was to be kind of irritated in this situation. Increasingly, though, I find myself thinking, in such situations, “well, why not?” Who am I to say whether a person’s need is legitimate, and what do I care if they want to spend my money on drugs or whatever? At least they will know someone looked at them kindly and gave them what they wanted.

Now, like most people, we don’t tend to travel with much cash, so we explained to him that we didn’t have any money to give him, quite literally, and I said to him, “If you have a need, it will be taken care of.”

“Oh yes, yes,” he said, “I’m a Christian, I know that.” My cynical side was already thinking, “Nice touch: he gets our sympathy by telling us he was traveling with his dogs who got locked in the car, and then he tells us he’s a Christian. That always gets ’em.” Meanwhile, an oriental man in the car next to us was hissing at us to ignore the young man: “He’s a professional.”

“How do you know?” I answered. In any event, we headed for the restrooms prior to taking our pup out, and my husband commented that maybe he had a couple of dollars. He looked in his wallet and sure enough, he had four whole dollars, so he headed back and gave them to the young man. Why not? He could, at best, only buy a bottle of Boone’s Farm with those few bucks. He said the young man said to him, “At least you didn’t ignore me. Most people have.”

I waited in the car while my husband took the puppy across the road to walk him, and I watched the young man busily walk up and down the path, steering clear of most people, occasionally entering the building, speaking to a few. When my husband got back in the car, I had been thinking about it for awhile, and I said to my husband, “So where are these two dogs? And can’t this guy call the police, or family members or friends and ask for help…or maybe the personnel at the rest stop could help him?” We decided to play social worker, and my husband got out and asked him about all these things. He reported that the man answered him in monosyllables, indicating that his dogs were “down there” (where?). He said he lived alone, indicating that he had no friends or relatives to help him. He answered all the other questions in monosyllables, and that was that. My husband said he seemed irritated to be so questioned.

We went on home.

This young man, who said he was from Scranton (and sounded it) could have been an ax murderer, an escaped prisoner, an angel, a drug addict, an ordinary panhandler, or he could even have been completely honest about what was causing him to have this need for people to give him money. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know which it was, but I keep thinking of something that happened to me many years ago, when I was on a spiritual retreat in the mountains of Western North Carolina.

The first few days of a retreat are always excruciating for me: I have a terrible time turning loose of the world, my body hurts, my mind races, I’m hungry, and all in all, I spend much time wondering why on earth I ever got myself into this mess. As I persist in my spiritual practice, eventually there will come detachment, and a rising, a disengagement with my body and my environment and my involvement in life. But it comes when it comes, and it takes brutally hard work, or at least it did in those days, when I was new to this meditative path.

So there I was, sitting on the side of the mountain, and it had rained and it was cold and damp and dreary and I was feeling sorry for myself and in despair of ever reaching the deeper stages of my retreat. I have found, always, that it is only when I let go, when I “learn to love wandering in the dark,” as is common to that first stage of the inner alchemical process, the stage of nigredo, letting go . . . when I opened my eyes and in the pasture below me, a young boy was walking across the field with a gun over his shoulder, and he saw me up there and turned and gave a casual wave . . . and suddenly, I had liftoff, as the saying goes. I moved into the higher reaches of the retreat, and I left the earth behind, like a balloon floating upward.

A casual event, one might say, but I eventually concluded that the young man in the pasture had either been an angel, Lord Krishna himself, or perhaps Khidr, the green one of eternal aliveness, angel or beyond the angelic, available to the sincere seeker and present at all initiation. When one seeks the divine, I was taught, one is always guided by the masters, saints and prophets of all the ages, and one never knows who will come to aid in the sacred quest. So I never entirely knew who that being was who strode across the pasture and turned to wave his magic wand over me as he passed, but I have my suspicions, and it really didn’t matter, because it worked. Such experiences can never be understood deeply except by the one who experiences them, but if the story is told, it may aid another.

It is because of such visitations, which have come at various times in my life, that I wondered who was this young man who asked us for money at the rest stop today. It really doesn’t matter, of course, but I’m rather glad that we gave him what we could. Who knows? Allahu A’laam.

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7 thoughts on “The Green One”

jgadd

My Truck Stop Adventure
In 1979 I took a cross country ride from California to North Carolina with a couple of guys in a Volkswagen van. Somewhere in Oklahoma we stopped at a truck stop. It was early in the morning and we were enjoying some morning cereal when a sorry looking woman stopped by the open side door of our van.

She looked poor and definitely stressed and asked if we could spare some money so she could get some breakfast for her kids. She pointed to her old green station wagon full of kids. She told us that she had driven to Oklahoma to pick up her husband who just got out of a mental hospital and now they had a long drive back home and her kids were hungry. She definitely looked to me like she needed help.

One of my travel mates, a sweet young yogi offered her a bag of uncooked oatmeal. I immediately knew that this was not going to work because how could she cook oatmeal at a truck stop? I gave her a $20.00 bill and she thanked me profusely and walked off. The guys were more suspicious than I was, and watched her make her way down the row of parked cars and end up at a parked big rig truck down on the end.

I don’t know what she negotiated with the driver but she opened the cab door on the passenger side and climbed in. We were speculating about what could be going on when all of a sudden the man who had been identified as her husband jumped out of the station wagon brandishing a rifle and ran down the row to the truck screaming at the truck driver.
The wife in some disarray jumped out of the truck and the truck driver very quickly drove away. The husband was still shouting and waving the rifle when I decided to make a mad dash for the bathrooms where I had earlier noted a public telephone (long before the cell phone). I made it to the phone and called 911 to tell them there was a man with a car load of kids waving a rifle at a truck stop.

Before the police could arrive the family piled in their station wagon and took off out of the truck stop. We were done with breakfast so we packed up and headed off on our journey.

A couple of miles up the road we came upon a scene. The station wagon had been pulled over into the meridian by three squad cars that surrounded it in three directions. Police with guns drawn were approaching the vehicle. We didn’t stop.

A great story that certainly reminds me of the days when we were all running around with our feet bare…. I particularly liked the guys’ reaction of offering a bag of oatmeal to the woman: what did they think she’d do, cook it on the radiator?

Judith, I’d be curious to know what meaning this has for you all these years later….

Well it was the only time in my life when I was confronted with a lunatic waving a shotgun. It seems much more commonplace now to hear of people with guns. I was surprised at how brave I was, that I risked running to the pay phone… perhaps it was foolish but I do think it stopped whatever craziness was going on with this poor little family stuffed in a station wagon. I hope they got to a better place that very day.

What impressed me was the guys who pulled out a bag of oatmeal, while you offered a $20. I thought that said quite a lot. It must have been terrifying, although I suppose it happened fast enough that you didn’t get much time to be terrified….

I traveled from Texas to Elizabethtown, New York in 1971, bothering people about Jesus. Had a dime because the cost of using a pay phone had risen so high. People were generous, helped me, gave me something to eat, probably hoping to shut me up, as if I couldn’t preach with my mouth full. I stole a jar of peanut butter once, believing it acceptable even to rob a bank, if I was serving God. A broken hearted man just out of prison for embezzlement paid for a motel room one night. A preacher in Brinkley, Arkansas first put me up in a hotel, then had me arrested when I persuaded the youth director of his church to forsake all and take to the road with me. 24 hours in a drunk tank in Brinkley, Arkansas.

When I was a boy, I wanted to be a hobo. This was back when they had long beards. I thought they might be Bible prophets. When I see people at the highway underpass where I live, I usually recognize them, having seen them at the same spot for weeks, months or even years. Sometimes I give them a dollar, if I have one. More often I try to time it so I don’t get caught there at the red light. Now I look like one of those old time hobos but I have a wife, children, home. Sometimes I feel a kind of shame, having lived this long, with still so little to give.

I love these stories….. But as to judging our capabity to give, I suspect we can’t possibly know what it is that we give every moment of our lives, nor what these lives of our mean. “For now we see through a glass darkly . . .”

Harnessing the Energies of Love

Some day, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then for the second time in the history of the world, we will have discovered fire.
― Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The Resurrection

The resurrection is a description of how the universe self-corrects, life always reasserting itself even when forces of death and darkness have temporarily prevailed. Like a tiny flower growing through cracks in broken cement, peace of mind emerging at last after periods of deep grief, or people continuing to fall in love despite the ravages of war, love always gets the final say. To lean on the resurrection is simply to recognize what’s true; that if happiness hasn’t arrived yet, then the story isn’t over.

Marianne Williamson, The Alchemy of Easter

Listening to the Muse

Just as anyone who listens to the muse will hear, you can write out of your own intention or out of inspiration. There is such a thing. It comes up and talks. And those who have heard deeply the rhythms and hymns of the gods, the words of the gods, can recite those hymns in such a way that the gods will be attracted. -- Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey, p.124

The Children of Sorrow…

Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it, because he is out of place in it, and yet he must be in it, his place is with those others for whom there is no room. His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world. - Thomas Merton

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The dead let go, floating out of their graves, dressed for a wedding. - Charlie Hopkins

Necessary Loneliness

"Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it."
— Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)

Setting the World on Fire

"In the absence of a higher ideal the constant striving after material inventions has led man to such devices as have set the world on fire." --Inayat Khan

Also There

All things
are too small
to hold me,
I am so vast

In the Infinite
I reach
for the Uncreated

I have
touched it,
it undoes me
wider than wide

Everything else
is too narrow

You know this well,
you who are also there
–Hadewijch (13th Century)

About the Rays

If you have visited this blog before and are confused that not only has the domain name changed, so has the title, you know that it was called "Footprints" after the Zen Oxherding poems for quite awhile. The poems are still here (see above).
As to the new title, a long time ago, one of the students of Hazrat (Saint) Inayat Khan, named Kismet Stam, published a book with exactly the same title I have decided to use here. It was a beautiful book and has long been out of print, which is why I feel comfortable using it, and why it is meant as a sort of tribute: Rays, pages in the life of a Sufi. To the Sufi, each of us is a ray of light shooting out from the central Sun that is God. This is the expression of this ray.

Crowned with the Stars

"You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself flows in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you." --Thomas Traherne

SIX

The valley spirit never dies;
It is the woman, primal mother.
Her gateway is the root of heaven and earth.
It is like a veil barely seen.
Use it; it will never fail. - Tao te Ching

DWELLING

I have nothing in my home that I do not find to be useful nor know to be beautiful. --William Morris

The True Invincibles

When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. --Gandhi

My Father and Best Friend: Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

Hazrat Pir-O-Murshid Inayat Khan

By my dear friend Gregory Blann

Who does the typing?

I've been a student of the Sufi teacher Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan for over 35 years. I have been his representative and an instructor of meditation and comparative religion during much of that time. I guide people seeking a contemplative path, in both individual meditative practice and alchemical retreats.
I am a psychotherapist and a teacher of psychology, focusing on the cllinical, depth and transpersonal theories of psychology. I have a Master's Degree in Existential Phenomenology and am "ABD" for my Ph.D. in Transpersonal Psychology. I am currently open to working with clients under the appropriate circumstances. Email me if you think we could work together in a collaborative fashion. I'll do what I can to help you go where you want to go.

God is in the Machine

With gratitude to the succession of my many and dearly-loved Macs through the years. Writers like to thank pivotal people in their lives who inspired them and helped them to become who they are. I have a long list of those too, but it was the Macintosh computer that set me free: it thinks as fast as I do, it thinks LIKE I do, and it has Soul. And I can listen to Krishna Das while I work on my writing, edit photographs or do creative work. I don’t do Windows. http://www.apple.com/

The Origin of the Footprints

I am following a Sufi path, in the International Sufi Order of Pir-o-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan. You will notice many quotes from his writings here, and from those of his successor and my own Pir (teacher), Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan. The most important thing that Sufism has given me has been complete spiritual freedom, which is why you will read many other quotes here, and my explorations of other paths, other philosophies. The Sufi, Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan said, has two points of view: his own, and that of the other. It is my inherent conviction that, as all rivers lead to the sea, all paths lead to the one goal most sacred to the heart. In our Sufi Order, we call this the Message: “the Message is a call to Awakening for all those meant to awaken, and a lullabye for those who are still meant to sleep.” –Inayat Khan

Of course, he himself would say that we are all awake, just as we are all, in different degrees, partially asleep! But each condition is temporary and meaningful: “I have come here not to teach you that which you do not know, but to awaken in you that which has always been your knowledge.” –Inayat Khan